A Stimulus Act for Wait Staff

By Christopher Shea

An easy way to boost the pay of waiters is to help customers with the math involved in tipping, a study finds. (Needless to say, doing so also serves as a subtle—or not-so-subtle—nudge.)

Two female waiters at a casual, mid-range restaurant in northern Utah carried four pennies in their pockets, two marked with ink, two not. At the end of each meal, they reached in and grabbed a coin. If it was marked, they gave diners a bill that included the calculations for a 15% tip and a 20% tip (before taxes). If unmarked, the waitresses provided the usual bill. Over the course of the study, the servers catered to 113 parties, ranging from one to eight people.

Customers who saw the printed calculations tipped an average of 18.7%, while those who didn’t tipped 16.3% Annually, that could mean hundreds of dollars in additional income for each server, the authors noted— and millions more dollars spent on the restaurant sector. (The practice is already catching on.)

It’s hard to say what effect the Utah setting had on the results. Utah is a notoriously low-tipping place, the authors noted, averaging about 10%.

“Persuasion by Way of Example: Does Including Gratuity Guidelines on Customers’ Checks Affect Restaurant Tipping Behavior?” appeared in the January issue of the Journal of Applied Social Psychology. The authors are by John S. Seiter, Garrett M. Brownlee and Matthew Sanders.